Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®, we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series in which we introduce a variety of topics that looks to educate and deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. To that end, this blog is Part II of a new and short series on “Key Legal and Drafting Issues for Non-solicitation Covenants/Agreements.” In Part I and the introduction to the series, we indicated that we would begin by focusing on the key considerations every employer should factor in when drafting employee non-solicitation agreements. Accordingly, we have, in this blog, hammered on “Considering Including Time, Geographic, or Other Restrictions” as one of the key considerations when drafting employee non-solicitation agreements.

Considering Including Time, Geographic, or Other Restrictions

As mentioned in Part I, employers draft and create employee non-solicitation agreements through which former employees, vendors, and independent contractors, among others, are limited from interacting with an employer’s employees and clients/customers in certain ways. Essentially, employers, particularly those with a large count of employees and in many locations, may want or need to incorporate a restriction aimed at limiting individuals covered under the non-solicitation agreement.

By doing this, a court would be prevented from deeming such a restriction to be overly broad or too restrictive. Remember, we said that, unlike non-disclosure agreements, many courts in multiple jurisdictions are more likely to consider non-solicitation agreements valid since the non-solicitation agreements do not hinder a former employee’s competing ability.

Usually, the issue regarding employees with whom someone had confidential information or employees with whom someone had direct or material contact is the source of most limitations for the enforceability of employee non-solicitation agreements. For example, an employee may agree that for a period of 12 months after separation of employment between him/her and a company, will not induce, solicit, or cause the company employee to sever their employment relationship with the company. For the purposes of this scenario, a “company employee” is deemed to be any individual (such as a vendor, independent contractor, or employee) performing services for the company in question and about whom the employee had interacted and knew confidential information or with whom the employee had material contact, within the last twenty-four months of their employment.

In Part III of this series, we will move the discussion forward by hammering on “Considering Limiting the Restraint on Employee Solicitation to a Reasonable Time Period,” another key consideration that every employer must factor in when drafting valid employee non-solicitation agreements that would be enforceable under the law.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and education. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.